Alfredo Arias
Pablo Ramírez
Juan Stoppani
Alfredo Arias
How was the idea conceived?
I never look for ideas. Petrona has always been in my life. The problem is that only certain times are conducive to executing certain things. In the case of Petrona, I read books at home and then watched the TV shows. In the books there are illustrations that seem to belong to a world of fantasy, of illusion, something totally surrealist. What interests me the most is seeing how people can find this history. I had the idea of recreating these cakes in porcelain, and potters did them. Pablo Ramírez makes the dresses that accompany the cakes and Juan Stoppani creates a few paintings of the cakes. I like to work with the theme of evocation. Along with Alejandra Radano we have made Tortazo, a show based on the texts that compose Patrona’s cookbook.
What’s so special about these cakes?
I believe they’re made only as an illusion. Making these cakes was a punishment. The originals were printed on a cookbook, and this is probably the first time they have actually been made in 3-D. To make them, you need to be a sculptor, a baker, a chemist, an astronaut…it was actually more of an imaginary world, like a Jules Verne who says “there will be an clock cake in the year 2715.” To me, these cakes are like Disney in the kitchen. Disney condenses and collects the ideas of a people, and Petrona does the same with her people but through the kitchen. On the other hand, there is a perfect connection between ceramics and the kitchen. The idea behind making these cakes in ceramic is to have everyone see them. It’s like saying, does the ghost exist or not? Yes, it exists, it’s here, and it’s the work of a sculptor. It’s the only way to see it in its existence.
What feelings does Petrona invoke?
Petrona’s language is aimed at the petite-bourgeoisie or the Argentine middle-class of the 40’s and 50’s that wanted better methods of expression. Petrona is another character, who’s very simple, but who gives perspective into social progress. It’s a middle-class that progresses. Many books of the era discuss how to dress a housemaid if you had one, the problems of hiring housemaids, and why it is better to have them living out of your home. Then they move onto topics of organizing yourself as a housewife, and it breaks down the day into hours, into minutes, on how to open and close a door. It’s fabulous, it’s Kafkian, and it recommends to women beauty and rest and reading.
And the nationalist symbols?
Many times there appear recognitions of patriotism. She is like Mariquita Sánchez de Thompson. Petrona created the national anthem in a kitchen. And in the theatrical representations she gave on television. And in the theatrical representation that we see on TV with Juanita. It is a bit like the patrician woman with la chinita (the housemaid) that accompanies her. It engages you like a very deep, historical farce. If you wanted to sociologically study what we’re saying, there are materials to understand this society and where it wanted to go. These materials happen to be what Petrona created. Our job is to say, “Look over there!” to give an indication of historical fragments embedded in everyday life. What happens is that history becomes all about politics, great writers, great painters, and everything else is left out. It’s incredible how one thing that seems insignificant, relegated, like an old cookbook, can immediately create an ambiance. Kitchens are underway, and ovens open and close like in a magical movie. We rework some of the pieces of the puzzle that is history. That way, the puzzle is complete. This woman stirs the pot of the famous stew nobody wanted to eat.
Where did you get the idea to present cakes with outfits? By seeing this combination, one gets the feeling they’re at an alternative museum, or a historical reenactment of a remote civilization…
The idea is to create an exhibit where various artists leave their mark to create a single space. This ambiance, this atmosphere, is centered on one theme. It’s distinct, and it’s why we display it at the café. It’s an artwork expressed through fashion, ceramics, painting, words.
This exhibition is reminiscent of your works and Stoppani’s works from the seventies. There’s something about it that’s kitsch, like the references to pop culture, the masses, communal work, and fashion. Do you see this continuity of Di Tella in Patria Petrona?
Di Tella was complex, because its options changed rapidly within those five to six years that everything was being developed. It was a very confusing period, where it found itself between pop art and conceptual art. I now see Di Tella mostly as a historical intervention; a group of people that found themselves to be a part of history. I don’t consider myself to be a plastic artist, but I was there at that time to make historical commentaries through that medium, of a recognized urban passage, of a people and their children who had come here as immigrants. It’s for those reasons that I find Di Tella to be profoundly Argentine. It corresponds to the history of a political moment and it ends right before that dark political process that came after. What interests me is history, and now my work is about that same theme, and I suppose there’s continuation from my previous projects in that sense. Rather than participating in the history of plastic art, I engage with history.
You had already showcased large cakes like these in the mid-seventies…
It’s true. Juan and I had worked with ceramics before, but one day Samuel Paz told us, “it seems to me that you two need to work with another technique, to explore all the nooks you want to,” so then we did our first exhibition with paper maché. Juan Stoppani created “Las Aventuras de la Vicky,” who was this huge character, and I made cakes out of old mattresses I found on the streets. We would disperse them and make cakes, and any empty space was covered with dwarves and Snow Whites and swans. I think cakes are related to a type of child-like dream, of sacred acts related to infancy. But yes, the idea of a cake remained.
CV
Named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, Alfredo Arias is one of the main cultural figures of Paris and Buenos Aires. Born in Argentina, Arias founded the TSE Group in 1968 and participated in the revolutionary Instituto Di Tella, known for redefining porteño culture in the 20th century. There, he showed Drácula, his first theatrical production. After spending some time in New York, he made Paris his home in 1970, where he directed Copi’s Eva Perón.
Arias’ style is centered on an imaginary baroque, oriented at reactivating personal memory and childhood. As a director and author, his works include Comedia policial, Lujo, Veinticuatro horas, La estrella del Norte, Penas de amor de una gata inglesa, and Penas de corazón de una gata francesa. In his works Mortadela, Fausto argentino, Mambo místico, and Familia de artistas, Arias explores for the first time his personal history and the history of his native country. As director of Centro Dramático de Aubervilliers, he has revisited fundamental texts of the French theatrical repertoire, like Pierre de Marivaux’s The Game of Love and Chance andMaurice Maeterlinck’s The Blue Bird. He’s also adaptedCarlo Goldoni’s La locandiera and William Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Festival d’Avignon.
In Buenos Aires, Arias has shown works such as Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, Alberto Ginastera’s Bomarzo, Benjamin Britten’s Death in Venice in Teatro Colón, and most recently in 2011 Tatuaje at the Teatro President Alvear.
Originally a student of the plastic arts, Arias has traversed various genres, like opera, music hall, comedic musicals, and theater. He has also published two books, Folies Fantômes and L’Écrite retrouvée (interviews with Hervé Pons).
Alfredo Arias has received three Molière awards: one as a lifetime achievement award, and the other two for his plays Mortadela and Penas del corazón de una gata francesa.
Pablo Ramírez
How did you and Arias met, and how many years have you worked together?
I first met him in the 90’s in San Martín, during that play he produced with Marilú (Marini). Then he asked me to do the costumes for Death in Venice at Teatro Colon. I also worked with him in Incrustaciones, then Divino Amore, Tatuaje, Tres Tangos, and Cabaret Tango Broadway.
When he proposed this project, what was your first reaction?
I was flattered, since both him and Stoppani started their careers in Di Tella, and because they’re revisiting the plastic arts it’s a completely special moment in the arts. I’m absolutely honored to be a part of this group. Also, I love Arias’ creative process. He does his research, he brings his ideas in this neat portfolia, and explains everything in it. It’s just great, you have all the information at your disposal. He showed me everything, and then let me go through my own creative process.
In what way did you imagine the relationship between the attire and the cakes? Would it be the clothes of the people who would eat the cake? Do you feel the link between these two turned out as you imagined?
In reality, I unconsciously did what I had to, and he put it into words. He made cakes for celebrations, and behind every celebration there’s a type of ritual, and in that ritual there’s an outfit. No one eats cake without clothes. He unified the materials through the porcelain he used for the cakes. I decided to do the same thing, but with different colors. All of the outfits are made of the same cloth. It’s a type of gabardine we call loneta, a cloth we use to make aprons. I wanted to use something that everyday people used.
Like Petrona and Arias, you use run-of-the-mill materials to create a rather sophisticated product.
Of course. I made a collection entitled Pueblo at the Museo de los Inmigrantes in Buenos Aires. I’m very interested in finding the glamour in simple things, in cheap things that are easily accessible.
As a fashion designer, you have at your side a cake designer with his own set of aesthetic rules. How do you manage your more synthetic, hyper kitsch, elaborate aesthetics?
The result was a decision Alfredo decided to make. I presented my proposals and opened up many options because I had no fear of being kitsch. But Alfredo saw everything and told me he preferred something that was more me. With that, you get a vision that’s Arias-Ramírez.
What’s your relationship to art? Have you show in galleries before?
They had a runway season at the Museo de Arte Moderno, called El arte está de moda. I decided to work against one of Alberto Heredia’s plays, and made a collection based on it. I also worked with Malba Moda. I had a runway show happen on the stairs of the museum.
Are you comfortable in this environment?
I don’t feel I’m an artist. I have a sense of what I do and don’t like but I don’t feel like I belong to this world. In any case, I love it. I suppose I feel more comfortable in the performing arts than the plastic arts, but even then my base and beginning as a designer is always a drawing. Even as a child I used to draw, and I always thought I’d end up studying the fine arts.
CV
Pablo Ramírez was born in Navarro, Buenos Aires in 1971. He started his studies in Fashion Design at the University of Buenos Aires in 1991. His first leap into the fashion world was in 1994 at the Mission Impossible of Paris. When he returned to Argentina, he worked as Design, Image, and Communications Director at Alpargatas, Via Vai, and Gloria Vanderbilt.
In 2000, he debuted with Casta, the first collection under his label, and formed part of the independent designers movement. The public and both the local and international press – among them Isabella Blow, Suzy Menkes, Stephen Gan, and Michael Roberts – recognized his Tango, Poesía, Patria, Pueblo, Snob, Bodas, Fatal, and Fiesta collections. Besides showing his work in Buenos Aires, he is occasionally invited to display his collections at fashion weeks around the world, including those in Madrid, Berlin, and Medellin.
Ramírez has also designed costumes for various theater, opera, and ballet productions. In 2009, he was Designer for Trois Tangos, Tatouage, and Alfredo Arias’ Cabaret Brecht Tango Broadway at the Théatre du Round-Point in Paris. In 2010, he designed for Arias’ Panachè Parisien (Villa Campo, Buenos Aires) and Carlos Casella’s Syracusa (Ballet Contemporáneo del Teatro San Martín).
Juan Stoppani
After many years, you’re collaborating with Arias again…
I feel a great respect for Alfredo. Since we began working at Di Tella, I knew he wanted to do theater. He worked with ceramics, he did many things, but he always managed to do theater. He is a man of theater, yet he’s very different from other directors I’ve meet. He’s one of those strange ones that, for example, worries about the clothes each character wears in a scene. Every time I’ve worked for him as Head of Wardrobe, which I began doing in the 70’s, I’ve had amazing reviews. He’s also very hardworking. In any case, we started working with ceramics in ’63…that’s why he’s such a natural.
Arias mentioned his mother noticed his interest for all things feminine through his regard for Petrona. Do you believe that installing huge cakes and dolls at galleries, and in the process inculcating a feminine undertone, was a component of Di Tella’s controversial nature?
I don’t do what I do to provoke. I do it to give pleasure. Alfredo was meant to follow the road to theater. But in respects to myself, or Edgardo Giménez, I say we never stopped making toys. We’re toy makers, and I say that because I can’t see what we created in any other way…
At times, you’ve mentioned how you’ve thought of what could have happened had you stayed in Argentina. Do you have a response?
They would have cut our heads off for some stupid reason. They put me in jail three times, and Alfredo was there with me. Why, I don’t know. We didn’t do politics. We were just targeted because we were in Di Tella. They thought we were communists, when in reality, we were the most superficial people on Earth.
I remember this quote that Masotta took from you, and it said you wanted people to like what you did. However, there were always some unexpected reactions to your works…
In “Experiencia 68,” I wanted to be seated and see the people but Romero said, “you can’t be seated.” So, instead, we put a woman with a turban on, and I put all my apples in that basket. For that reason I called it Todo lo que Juan Stoppani no se pudo poner.
Are you interested in Petrona?
I vaguely remember her. If you mention her name, I’ll know who you’re talking about, but I had bigger idols, like Nini Marshall. It’s true that Petrona was an Argentine character. She has that Argentine thing to her, that exaggeration…Alfredo had made her torta patria for an exhibit at Di Tella. He was the only one who could put up new work. And that’s what the whole world saw. Alfredo is very theatrical. When he asks Ramírez to makes corresponding outfits, he creates a cake and a character. He’s actually making a play through this exhibit, and that’s very Alfredo. I think it very wise of him.
When I saw this exhibit, I couldn’t help but think about the works you and Arias had made in the 60’s.
It’s more his style. He had already made things that could have been cakes. I did La Vicky, but he had made these cakes, with some ducks on them…but you’re right, it’s very much his style.
But I also think that what you all did with dolls, all which had certain interactions…that’s very much what’s happening on top of Petrona’s cakes. Petrona created a sort of figurative narrative.
Yes. We’re like descendents of Petrona. I don’t know why. I made a Minnie Mouse series in the seventies, in Paris. And when I brought it to Buenos Aires I made them of ceramic, and there’s this bonbonniere of Lady Godiva, and I made the heads out of chocolate. And now, I think Alfredo’s going to make the choclos out of chocolate. Here’s what I say: art is meant to be eaten.
Not this art, because it’s made out of porcelain…
Well, but by eat I mean you’ll consume it. I’m sure there’ll be people who will want to have these cakes because they’re just so beautiful.
CV
Juan Stoppani was born in Buenos Aires in 1935. He studied architecture at the University of Buenos Aires and completely dedicated himself to sculpture and design.
In November of 1964, he participated in the Objetos 64 exhibit, organized by Hugo Parpagnoli at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires. A year later, Stoppani presented Microsucesos at La Recova Theater as a member of the Siempre-Viva Company. He integrated the showing of the Premio Ver y Estimar in 1965, and the following year participated in the Premio Nacional del Instituto Di Tella. He was the recipient of the Premio Braque and helped mold the first Festival de Formas Contemporáneas in Córdoba as a response to the BienalAmericana de Art IKA.
Juan Stoppani was invited to Di Tella’s Experiencias Visuales in 1967 and 1968, and his works were included in the Nuevo Ensamble at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. In 1969, he participated in the Fashion Show Poetry Event at the Center for Inter American Relations in New York. That same year he relocated to Paris where he helped form the TSE Groupe with Alfredo Arias.
He worked with designer Richard Peduzzi’s in his studio, and has collaborated on stage design with Copi, Jean Louis Barrault, Jeròme Savary, Roland Petit and George Lavelli, among others. In the 1980’s, he was Professor of Fashion Design at Studio Berçot, and was also a designer in the “underground” circles of Paris.